The field of this invention relates to electrology, and more particularly to an electrolysis machine which is to be usable for permanent removal of undesirable hair on human beings.
Removal of unwanted hair on human beings has long been known. Primarily, hair removal is utilized in conjunction with women. The prime objective of electrolysis is to permanetly remove the hair after a single application. This is normally accomplished by destroying the hair follicle from which the hair grows. This destruction of the hair follicle is to be accomplished with a minimum amount of tissue destruction and also with a minimum amount of pain during application of the technique.
In order to effect permanent removal of a hair, it has been found that the hair must be destroyed from the papilla all the way to the surface of the skin. The destruction has to be performed carefully or tissue scaring will occur causing hard lumps on the surface of the skin, which are unsightly and totally unacceptable.
For a great many years, electrolysis used only a direct current. The direct current tends to flow more quickly to areas where it is more moist, namely the lower portion of the hair follicle. This results in the producing of a chemical reaction, the main product of which is sodium hydroxide, or lye. This sodium hydroxide is caustic and literally eats away at the hair.
Direct current electrolysis causes a low rate of re-growth, which is quite advantageous. However, it has certain disadvantages, in that it takes a substantial period of time (one to three minutes) for each hair follicle. Therefore, considering the wages of an electrologist, direct current electrolysis becomes quite expensive. Also, direct current electrolysis is somewhat painful to the patient.
In recent years, a new electrolysis technique, called "thermolysis" became prevalent. Thermololysis used a probe in the same manner as direct current electrolysis uses a probe. However, with thermolysis, instead of direct current, a high frequency sinusoidal voltage is injected into the follicle. The radio frequency tends to physically cook the follicle thereby dessicating such.
Thermolysis has a primary advantage in that it is exceedingly fast and can be even faster than a tenth of a second for high intensity bursts of radio frequency energy. Thermolysis also has the advantage that it is simple to train an operator to learn this technique. Most often, thermolysis takes three to five seconds, which is an incredible increase over one to three minutes, which is necessary with direct current electrolysis.
Thermolysis also has the additional advantage in that the heating pattern begins at the tip of the probe and spreads with time. This is called the "point effect" and causes the follicle destruction to begin at the very bottom, which is the desirable pattern to follicle destruction.
The disadvantages of thermolysis is that the heating pattern is narrow. It has been generally found that thermolysis has a low reliability factor when used on heavy or curly hair. This is due to the fact that heavy hair follicles are too wide for the heating pattern. In relation to curly hair the follicle itself will curl away from the probe and thereby leave hair follicle areas which have not been destroyed. Any portion of the hair follicle that has not been destroyed will be capable of regrowing.
Most recently, a new technique came to pass which frequently called the "blend" technique. This blend technique combines the direct current technique with the radio frequency technique. The radio frequency technique causes heat in the follicle which increases the rate of chemical action for the direct current. The heat also tends to open the tissue allowing the lye to penetrate the tissue much more quickly. The result is all the reliability and low regrowth rates of the direct current technique has been obtained within a substantially shorter period of time.
Normal treatment time for the blend technique is about twenty to thirty seconds. This is considerably longer than the thermolysis technique by itself, but also substantially shorter than the direct current electrolysis by itself. Also, using the blend technique, uniform reliability throughout all different hair types is obtained.
It is to be kept in mind the time variation in any technique has to do with the pain threshold of a particular patient. If the patient can undergo a higher level of pain, he can then have the hair removed more quickly than another patient that is more sensitive to pain.